


Exchange

by karanguni



Category: Sengoku Jidai | Sengoku Period RPF
Genre: Epistolary, Gen, M/M, Slow Burn, Slow Thaw
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-22
Updated: 2018-11-22
Packaged: 2019-08-27 14:08:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,060
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16703902
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/karanguni/pseuds/karanguni
Summary: If it takes a thousand hours to weave together cloth, Terutora thinks, what is a thousand years to weave together all the countries under Heaven?





	Exchange

**Author's Note:**

  * For [izayoi_no_mikoto](https://archiveofourown.org/users/izayoi_no_mikoto/gifts).



> Happy Yuletide! :D I hope you enjoy - you asked for something historical, and I hope I've been able to deliver!
> 
> Nagao Kagetora is Uesugi Kenshin's birth name.

_Eiroku 4 (1561)_

The spring, in the fourth year of Eiroku, is cold, as are all springtimes in snow country. The fields blaze white under the sun and cloudless sky, unbearable to look at directly. Time seems frozen, in faraway Echigo; caught between the mountains and the sea, the world is glacial and unmoving.

Kagetora knows better than to believe in the permanence of winter; the one he left behind is not the one now thawing. It has been a year since he marched his forces into Kantō against the Hōjō. Months since the mild southern spring began here in Sagami, where Odawara Castle rears up on impregnable stone foundations still unconquered.

A courier comes up to Kagetora, breaking him out of contemplation. 'Two missives, my lord,' the messenger says, and lays them down before withdrawing.

Kagetora breaks the seal on the first letter, a message from Echigo. The news - written in blocky characters, a military scribe's handwriting - is unsurprising: _the Takeda are advancing on our territory in your absence, &c._

He sets the errata aside for later reading in favour of opening the second letter. This one is more elaborate; the paper stock unfamiliar to the touch.

_Nagao Kagetora: you have left your lands untended. Let this notice come as a warning._

It is a short letter, and unlikely to have been dictated. Kagetora traces a finger down the date imprint. The letter is weeks old: a forewarning from the past is no warning at all. The name _Shingen_ is printed clearly above the man's _kao_ signature. His own name has been omitted from the proper recipient's field on the left of the note; Shingen has done him the discourtesy of writing it into the body of the message. Kagetora smiles, faintly. Even now, Shingen will not let him forget that the Takeda are the _shugo_ of Kai whilst the Nagao are _shugodai_ of Echizen: representatives, not rulers.

Kagetora puts both letters aside and turns his face to the north. The skies are clear; the air is still and heavy with anticipation. The seasons are turning over again, this third month.

A year ago, Kagetora had marched his troops past the _karamushi_ fields of Echigo as the green tips of young seedlings were just beginning to emerge. While his army's column moved southwards, day by day the sprouts would have grown, their shoots rising from brown earth to chase the oncoming summer. But no first springtime growth of _karamushi_ ever sees long days and warm evenings: the fields are burned down before then. Farmers encircle the crops with fire and set them alight until everything but the root-stock, strong and safe underground, is left. They then dig the black ash back into the soil; fertilising and watering before covering it with straw until a second flush of growth bursts through, stronger than the one before.

Kagetora picks up his brush and writes his replies, but his mind is on the fields of Echigo, recalling the flames and the razed earth and all of its promise.

* * *

On the sixteenth day of the the third month, on the sacred grounds of the Tsurugaoka Hachiman shrine in Kamakura, Nagao Kagetora inherits leadership of the Sannai Uesugi clan from Uesugi Norimasa. With it comes the titular post of _kantō kanrei_.

As the shogun's deputy in the East, Kagetora changes his name and becomes Uesugi Masatora. He has enough time, barely, to administer announcement letters to that effect before turning the Uesugi vanguard back northwards, abandoning the siege of Odawara Castle.

Masatora's scribes have their fingertips stained red from stamping, repeatedly, the Uesugi official _hanko_ seal on the announcements. He banishes them from his presence to write one final letter on the eve of his departure.

_Nagao Kagetora, danjō shōhitsu, is no more: here Uesugi Masatora, kantō kanrei and shugo of the Sannai Uesugi, writes to you in his place. If you consider these inheritances nominal simply because they come to me by adoption and not by blood, consider this: it was not I who plotted with the Imagawa to close my own father out of my country's borders in order to inherit._

_That is not an indictment. You and I both have fought like tigers, tooth and claw, for our worldly titles. I am as willing as Takeda Harunobu to be ruthless when circumstances demand it._

_In these days of ours, where there is little order under Heaven, circumstances demand much_.

Masatora signs the letter with his _kao_ , addresses it, and then watches, patiently, for the black ink to dry. He finds his official seal and considers its stained engraved surface, then - entirely superfluously - inks that as well, and affixes it atop his signature, the red bleeding into black.

* * *

Shingen's response reaches Masatora while he is on the march towards Kasugayama castle and the forces which his retainers have begun to amass there.

In his travel camp seated on his small cramped travel stool, Masatora turns over the _kirifu_ , the letter sealed such that it is for his eyes only to read. The _fushi_ envelope, when he removes it, reveals the unbroken ink line of the _kasanegami_ underneath. It is inked in red, not black, and Masatora laughs quietly to himself as he unfolds the document proper, which at a glance reveals a gruff, precise formality.

_It is not the nature of how you inherited that is nominal, my lord: it is the nature of what you inherited. Your humble servant begs to know what it is you, as kantō kanrei, are responsible for: do you act for the Ashikaga in the East? One thinks that you do not._

_A decorative vessel, kept only for display, is no vessel. My lord, who remains a vassal of pretty titles and borrowed names, I hope you might deign to look upon the gift which has been sent with this letter._

_Yours in awesome timidity, ..._

It is addressed, in a combination of ironic compliance and pig-headed insolence, to _Nagao kantō kanrei_ , and signed once more with Shingen's _kao_.

Masatora puts the letter down and picks up the accompanying gift. The containing box is elaborately wrapped; Masatora dispenses with it quickly, used to frippery and not impressed by it. Inside is a crude cup, misshapen and ill-decorated, but very functional indeed. Masatora calls for tea to be brewed and served to him in it.

 _It is a marvellous thing,_ he thinks as he sips, _to drink sumptuous tea from Uji in the poorest of cups from from Kai._

Masatora sends no reply for now. His actions will speak for him.

Shingen's letter he places in safekeeping in a lacquered box alongside all the others that have come before it; poor paper inside a rich prison. It has been eight years since their first battle at Kawanakajima; it is not the first box which Masatora has filled.

* * *

On the ninth month, with his blood and the sounds of battle both roaring in his ears, Masatora pushes his charger along the plains of Hachimanbara. Hōshōtsukige, sides heaving under Masatora's saddle, froths at the gums as they push and push; behind them, the Sai and Chikuma rivers run red where they are not dammed up by bodies of the fallen.

Masatora, heartbeat pounding in his ears, reaches the Takeda command post. He commands his horse down the line of Takeda flags, the quadruple-diamond emblems whipping in the wind, and charges into the command post. When the Takeda soldiers, taken by surprise at their full-frontal assault, rise up, Uesugi foot soldiers meet them.

For his part, Masatora has but one aim, one target. His sword is drawn as he forces past the clashing bodies around him towards Shingen, whose campstool goes flying backwards as he rises to meet him.

Shingen is unprepared. Masatora's blade, _Azuki_ of Nagamitsu make, is met by nothing more than Shingen's battle fan. The fan falls from Shingen's hand as Masatora, possessed by Bishamonten, recovers to strike again. He has time enough to look into Shingen's eyes as he does so.

Masatora sees no fear, no panic, no cowardice from Shingen in the man's final moments. Shingen is already reaching for the short blade at his side. Masatora craves to meet him in a second strike.

It does not come to pass. One of Shingen's retainers comes at him from the side, and - distracted for too long - Masatora cannot manoeuvre Hōshōtsukige quickly enough to evade. A spear pierces his horse's flank and it panics, rearing up with a thunderous death-knell before throwing Masatora and collapsing to the ground.

Takeda reinforcements are pouring to their lord's aid. Masatora, breathing hard, cannot look away from Shingen any more than Shingen will look away from him.

'My lord Uesugi!' Masatora can hear his retainers cry. 'The moment is lost - we must retreat!'

Masatora sheathes his blade. 'By my sword and no other,' he tells Shingen as he memorises the outline of Takeda's face: the eyes, the unforgettable eyes. 'You will die by my sword, and no other.'

'Not today,' is Shingen's simple reply.

Masatora is swept away by his retinue. The whole of Hachimanbara is a hellscape. So many are dead from either side that it can be called neither defeat nor victory. Masatora, mounting another horse, leads the Uesugi retreat; north again, north again, north again to the temple of Zenkō-ji.

They burn down their encampment as they go. The fields are black with death; the skies are dark with smoke. Shingen does not stop them, nor pursue. Masatora does not turn his back to make sure.

* * *

Masatora writes to Shingen:

 _If this is the price our men pay for meeting,_ _perhaps we best not meet again, for a while. If one or the other of us had been victorious - if one or the other of us had brought some mediocre amount of unity to the lands of Shinano - then maybe the price would have been worth the paying_.

_I would face you again in a moment, but for the wives and the daughters and the sons and the fathers and the mothers of the fallen, I will wait a while longer._

_Keep well until then. And do not die of old age, either._

* * *

It is too far to go, and there is too much to do, now, to return to Echigo; Kantō has trapped him. On the eve of the new year, at the death of the twelfth month, Masatora - now named Terutora by grant of the shogun Yoshiteru - finds himself ringing out the year in Maebashi castle; close to home, but not close enough.

* * *

_Eiroku 5_

The fields are black when Terutora, at last, returns home, but it is a welcome sight. The mountains are in their melt, and the burbling streams and dripping leaves of the trees are a chorus harkening him back. Home again, home again. The _karamushi_ fields are well-tended, and the second crop is already pushing up through the soil.

It is time, Terutora thinks, to rest.

After so much time away, it is work to put his government in order again. There are, as there always will be, politics and intrigues to be managed; everything from petty fights to serious matters of state. But those, Terutora feels, are simpler than war. Almost everything is. He spends time in his study when he can, tracing trade routes instead of marching ones. After all, a country does not run on honour and glory and gore alone.

As the third month gives way to the fourth and then the fifth, Terutora spends time in the _karamushi_ fields, walking quietly amongst the dense, straight-growing green stalks and brushing his hand over their leaves. He takes several fields under the auspices of his own estate, and keeps watch on their production.

At the height of summer, Terutora sits atop a grassy knoll with his ugly, forlorn Takeda cup in hand and reads poetry while the farmers sickle down the crop. It is methodical work to bundle them stalks up and take them to the dammed-up streams nearby to be soaked and washed. The chatter of the workmen and the air-slicing hum of their tools are the sounds of peace on earth; a northern paradise of its own.

Terutora visits with the weaver guilds whilst the _karamushi_ is turned, painstakingly and with back-breaking effort, into _aoso_ fibre for fabric making. As the men return to other harvests, the women wear down their hands processing _aoso_ , hanging the drying fibre bundles in the storerooms in anticipation of autumn. Terutora picks a simple white diamond design set against darkest indigo for a future order of cloth. It will be a while before the finished product is ready, but very few of those born in snow country lack patience.

It is autumn before the _aoso_ threads can be properly twisted into warp and weft for the weaving. Hundreds of hours are spent by the artisans at their looms to produce the cloth that Terutora has commissioned. Sometimes, in the darkening evenings, he walks past their houses and hears the thumping of the _izaribata_ looms being worked and thinks of the thousand strands interconnecting and locking in place.

If it takes a thousand hours to weave together cloth, Terutora thinks, what is a thousand years to weave together all the countries under Heaven?

* * *

_Eiroku 6_

It is only the next year that Terutora sees the _jōfu_ cloth in its completed form. It is the middle of the second month, and the diamonds of the Takeda insignia glitter in stark relief against deep blue as the weavers lay full lengths of last year's cloth out on the still-snowy fields to bleach under the sun.

A full week later, Terutora runs the finished, dried cloth through his hands; once, twice, and then thrice before he folds it square and settles it into a box for courier.

He does not write a letter, this time. Shingen might be able to afford a set of outfits made of _Echigo jōfu_ , but Kai itself - unlike Echigo - cannot afford a warlord with cosmopolitan tastes. It is in no small part _aoso_ which makes Echigo rich from trade; and it is no small present that Terutora is sending.

Whether Shingen will think this an insult or gift or exhortation on economics during a time of war, only Shingen can know. Terutora does not, now, try to guess how those eyes of Shingen's see the world. But he sends the cloth, this cross-section of the heart of Echigo, and expects no reply in turn.

* * *

_Eiroku 7_

They meet again at Kawanakajima, this time near Shiozakijima. Terutora never sees Shingen in the flesh, though they skirmish for more than two months.

 _Is balance achieved when nothing is gained but nothing is lost?_ Terutora sends to Shingen one day, more philosophical joke than serious query.

 _Can one die by a blade that he never sees?_ Shingen returns.

Takeda and Uesugi both withdraw from the field not long after that. Terutora is, to the consternation of his council, content with the outcome. He thinks deeply on Shingen's words thereafter.

* * *

_Eiroku 10_

It is, ironically, the Imagawa who force Terutora's hand. Though they may have once conspired to put Shingen in his father's seat as _shugo_ , their alliance with the Takeda is nevertheless a brittle one easily broken by earthly considerations. In some ways, Shingen's troubles are of Shingen's own making: Terutora hears whispers of an attempted coup by Shingen's son and heir, Yoshinobu. Life is a karmic cycle, Terutora thinks, even though Shingen thwarts the attempt. Yoshinobu is driven to suicide; his wife, of Imagawa stock, is sent back to her family, and so the long thread of fate begins to unravel.

The Imagawa, furious, convince the Hōjō to break their oaths to the Takeda, and together they place an embargo on Kai, cutting it off from the salt trade entirely. Encircled by mountains as it is, landlocked Kai has no way of producing its own. Terutora waits and watches, but he knows what the eventual outcome will be: without salt, Kai will not survive the oncoming winter.

 _It is cowardly but clever of the Imagawa to do this,_ Terutora writes to Shingen. _Still, I intend for the differences between us to be settled on a battlefield; for that, I need you alive yet. Echigo will send salt to Kai - we will sell it to you at prevailing prices. Fill my treasury so that I may fill my armoury: we will meet again, someday._

Terutora buries his letter in a box of finest-grain salt, and sends it with the first trading caravan to Kai.

The return of the caravan brings with it a gift in turn. In the privacy of his own quarters, Terutora unwraps the gift. It is undoubtedly a sword; freed from its wrappings, it reveals itself to be a _tachi_ , deeply curved and beautifully forged. Terutora turns the blade over in his hands and thinks of Hachimanbara, of Shingen's eyes, of the way Shingen rises to meet every challenge.

 _At least if you kill me and my country by means of the long blade of commerce,_ Shingen's note reads, _I will have bought and paid for it myself._

The next salt caravan Terutora sends, he pays for out of his own coffers.

 _This salt is not a gift,_ he writes to Shingen. _It is, for me, an investment. A blade without a whetstone is, after all, doomed to become but a dull decoration._

* * *

Autumn gives way to winter. Deep drifts of snow blanket the wide world, closing off roads and mountain passes. Echigo goes into hibernation once more. What the next thaw will bring, Terutora cannot know. For months, he waits for news of whether Kai has survived or perished.

It is in the spring of the tenth year of Eiroku when the messengers come, riding up past the black and green fields to deliver into Terutora's hands a package bound up and thrice-sealed.

Inside is a _kosode_ cut from familiar cloth: Takeda diamond-stars against a dark, unknowable sky.

Terutora dons it as a first layer, closest to his skin and beneath other disguising layers and then his silken _hitatare_. At his writing table, tea steams from an ugly, functional cup. In his sword-drawer, a _tachi_ waits for its day.

In the cyclical way of things, they will - Terutora hopes, and sometimes even prays - meet face to face once more.

**Author's Note:**

> Mea culpa: this fic is a mishmash of fact and conjecture; while it follows the historical chronology wherever possible, there are a few generous sprinklings of liberties taken.
> 
> Historical errata, if you are interested:
> 
> * The National Diet Library has an excellent English language article on how to write and sign the snootiest of medieval Japanese letters [here](http://www.ndl.go.jp/en/publication/ndl_newsletter/212/21203.html). [This other article](http://www.ndl.go.jp/en/publication/ndl_newsletter/216/21604.html) in the same series has Shingen's actual _kao_ , even. Meanwhile, the Niigata prefectural library has [Kenshin's](https://www.pref-lib.niigata.niigata.jp/?page_id=899) _kao_ (and a gorgeous sampling of his handwriting). Want more Kenshin writing porn? [I'm glad you asked!](https://n-story.jp/topic/88/page1.php)
> 
> * Princeton has this [absurdly well-annotated](http://komonjo.princeton.edu/uesugi/) example of letters written to Kenshin. It describes, amongst other things, how letters were sealed AND has audio readouts! KANBUN FOR EVERYONE.
> 
> * I am indebted to the [Far Beyond The Miyako](https://www.farbeyondthemiyako.com/3696012293279312280612398125021252512464---far-beyond-the-miyako-blog/takeda-shingen-the-limits-of-perseverance-and-ambition) blog for some very detailed notes on Shingen, including this pretty incredible analysis of the Imagawa-Shingen bit of political jutsu that (allegedly) helped Shingen become _shugo_ himself
> 
> * The _shiotome no tachi_ sword that Shingen allegedly gives Kenshin is detailed [here](https://meitou.info/index.php/%E5%A1%A9%E7%95%99%E3%82%81%E3%81%AE%E5%A4%AA%E5%88%80) in Japanese, but there is a much more picture-ful and English record of it from the [National Treasures & Important Cultural Properties of National Museums](http://www.emuseum.jp/detail/100479?x=&y=&s=&d_lang=en&s_lang=&word=&class=&title=&c_e=&region=&era=&cptype=&owner=&pos=1&num=1&mode=&century=) website (!!!).
> 
> * _Aoso_ production from _karamushi_ ("ramie" in English; a sort of nettle-y flax-y plant) is hard-core; see this v. interesting [article](http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1862&context=tsaconf), or, better yet, let your mind be blown by this [**amazing** presentation](https://artsandculture.google.com/exhibit/swLSnyvC2Y6DIQ) on Echigo joufu, i.e. the world's most intense tie dye.
> 
> * If you ever want to cosplay kosode, [this site](http://www.wodefordhall.com/kosode.htm) apparently _really_ wants to get your back
> 
> Lastly, Kenshin's constant name-swapping is pretty heinous; he does not actually take the Kenshin name which he's famous for until after this fic is set (around 1670), for which I apologise sincerely to any readers coming to this fic at random.
> 
> Thanks to rosefox for the beta readthrough!


End file.
